Not more very kind words! Yes, amazingly ...

I was amazed to receive a really wonderful review from a reader the other day, as I mentioned here earlier in the week.

It's more than wonderful to be noticed because it's almost as lonely writing as it is sailing solo.

Of course, ocean navigation offers continually changing and often dramatic scenes, and visits by some of the most extraordinary collections of ocean birds.

However, to experience these beautiful and graceful flyers you have to say farewell to society and venture off over the horizon.

Encouraging

Of course, busy-ness at the keyboard doesn't actually do much for changing scenes, for seeing much of life, except those pictures and portrayals that the mind often treats us to.

What a further and wonderful surprise then to be pointed towards some really encouraging words on the US website of Amazon.

This review of Sailing to Purgatory came from reader Gerry Roos who lives in the Northeast of the US. Under the title, A Very Pleasant Surprise, she writes ...

Boats..... I do not like them. The concept of sailing bores me to slumber.

HOWEVER, author Paul Rodgers in this book writes so well I am delighted and transported by his awesome sea saga.

Clever writing, clever analogies with light hearted humility is enchanting. The sea is deitized … Continues on the blogs for my ocean adventuring book, Sailing to Purgatory, at
http://sailingtopurgatory.com/index.php/feeds/485-not-more-very-kind-words-yes-amazingly

How amazing! Sudden praise from a stranger

Isn’t it a real surprise when someone you don’t know compliments you on, say, your clothes, or something you said, or perhaps your good manners in holding a door open for a lady.

But when, suddenly out of the blue, someone takes the trouble to write to you to compliment you on a book you have written, a book that is truly close to your heart, well, what an astonishing joy that is.

It doesn’t happen often, sad to say, but it did this week.

A complete stranger emailed to say he really enjoyed Sailing to Purgatory.

And so much so that he asked if I had enjoyed any success so far in trying to get some justice for the sentence of nineteen years imprisonment, with possessions including my gorgeous yacht and funds forfeited.

Dear Paul Rodgers,

I have just finished reading your book Sailing to Purgatory. I must congratulate you on having written such a gripping read, a real page-turner even without the astonishing, totally unexpected, finale; I really did not see that coming.

You have a tremendous way with words. …  Continues on the blogs for my ocean adventuring book, Sailing to Purgatory, at
http://sailingtopurgatory.com/index.php/feeds/484-how-amazing-sudden-praise-from-a-stranger

The strange magic of a magical metropolis

LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT MY HOME TOWN whose reputation encouraged me to up stakes as a young man and move right across the world to London which for some mysterious reason had always seemed to be, well, my home town.

Yet as I look at the details related by DelanceyPlace.com, I realise suddenly that while this magic city, this metropolis, had beckoned me from so far off, I had never even visited the place.

As far as I can recall, not once.

I arrived in the world in Salisbury but was brought up in my earliest years in Southampton.

The family migrated

Crippling conditions after the war inspired my parents to migrate, and off the family went to New Zealand.

How did this metropolis reach out to me? I still wonder, but it’s quite possible that the greater proportion of my almost nine million neighbours couldn’t say either.

They aren't short of praise, though. Here's one of our earlier residents, for instance.

'London ... Immense. The richest town in the world, the biggest port, the greatest manufacturing town, the Imperial city, the centre of civilisation, the heart of the world. It's a wonderful place ... a whirlpool, a maelstrom! It whirls you up and it whirls you down.’
Continues on the blogs for my ocean adventuring book, Sailing to Purgatory, at
http://sailingtopurgatory.com/index.php/feeds/483-the-strange-magic-of-a-magical-metropolis